


there you found me

by princesitka



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Childhood Friends, Coming of Age, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Pining Keith (Voltron), Secret love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-21
Updated: 2018-07-21
Packaged: 2019-06-13 19:46:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15371994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/princesitka/pseuds/princesitka
Summary: I’ve always thought people who said they “found themselves” were assholes. Going off on a cross country road trip in your mid twenties or paying hundreds of dollars to meet a “spiritual guru” does not a soul searching experience make, no matter how many pictures you post on your Instagram about it.In fact, finding yourself can happen in your shitty childhood bedroom, surrounded by dusty comic books and week old laundry.





	there you found me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [duckie520](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=duckie520).



> My piece for the Sheith Flower Exchange! My recipient chose a yellow acacia, meaning secret love. I've always wanted to write something with a childhood friends AU, and I used a lot of inspiration from my own life for this fic. Hope you enjoy!

I’ve always thought people who said they “found themselves” were assholes. Going off on a cross country road trip in your mid twenties or paying hundreds of dollars to meet a “spiritual guru” does not a soul searching experience make, no matter how many pictures you post on your Instagram about it.

In fact, finding yourself can happen in your shitty childhood bedroom, surrounded by dusty comic books and week old laundry. 

When I was younger, I knew who I was. I was the little boy who loved ripping grass from the earth and destroying ant hills under my dirty Skechers while my parents cleaned out the garage. I was also the little boy who talked to anyone and everyone relatively my age, and that was including the young boy helping his parents move boxes from the back of a truck into the house across the street.

He’d looked a little confused when I’d ran over, a little surprised even, standing there in basketball shorts and a NASA t-shirt with ketchup stains, gripping a cardboard box filled with comic books.

“I’m Keith!” I’d proclaimed wildly, face still slightly sticky from the ice pop my mom had let me have and hair damp with sweat clinging to my forehead. “D’you wanna come see my cars?” 

Before I could receive a proper answer to my invitation, my poor, tired mother was hauling me back across the street by the shoulder, throwing apologies to our new neighbors in between chewing me out for crossing the street when I was supposed to remain in the yard to play. 

His name was Shiro, and a couple days after our first meeting, my parents had his family over for dinner. 

He was three years older than me, and an only child too, to which our parents jokingly decided we could be each other’s brothers. I’d loudly pleaded with my parents over my messy plate of spaghetti to adopt Shiro so that I could have a real big brother, and my mother had wiped my mouth off and told me to finish eating my meatballs. 

After dinner, I’d showed him my tree house, and all my toy cars and model rocket ships. He’d showed every constellation we could find on my star map and we’d labeled them in white Sharpie marker. 

In a way, Shiro did become my big brother. He watched out for me on hot summer days at the park when I got too ambitious on the monkey bars and bandaged my knee when I inevitably fell, and taught me more things about the night sky than I learned at school. We spent most days together after our classes ended, eating poptarts on my parent’s dusty old couch while watching Scooby Doo and talking about how one day we’d chase down monsters too. 

He stayed my brother until the day I looked outside my bedroom window and noticed the tanned skin of his back and the way his newly formed muscles moved as he pushed the lawnmower across his front lawn, and something in me shifted so entirely that I knew I could never see him the same way again. 

I avoided him for a whole week leading up to my first day of middle school, afraid to look him in the face and admit to myself something that would inevitably ruin the both of us and a friendship we’d nurtured for years. But he made me, the day I was rummaging through the tree house looking for spare pencils to fill my backpack with.

Shiro had squeezed himself through the opening in the floor, shoulders filled out and broadened so much he could barely fit, and had sat cross legged on the rotted wood with an expression so open I felt like he didn’t need to say anything. 

“You okay?” He’d asked, carefully, like he didn’t want to disrupt the dust on the rockets that had long since seen their last flights.

“Yeah.” I’d answered, staring absentmindedly at the faded star map and trying not to look at him, because my expression was just as open as his when I was lying and he could read me just as well as he could the star map. “Just nervous.”

“About tomorrow? Keith, you’ll be fine. Middle school is no big deal.” 

I let him think that was it. School was all I was nervous about. And not the electric feeling under my skin and the butterflies in my stomach every time I caught sight of him. 

“Besides,” He’d continued, throwing me one of his glittering lopsided grins. “If anyone messes with you they’ll have me to answer to.”

That was the problem, I figured.

Middle school passed like a sand storm, overwhelming and all at once but then over abruptly. My mother lemented my lack of friends and how I’d made no attempt to make any, and I’d snapped at her that I didn’t need any. Was fine on my own.

She’d asked when the last time Shiro and I hung out was.

The last time I’d talked to Shiro was halfway through eighth grade, when he’d patiently tried to help me understand algebra in the musty coolness of the local library. I hadn’t asked him to, but my mother had as a result of my failing grades. It had taken him about an hour to teach me one measly equation, but Shiro being Shiro had promised me celebratory ice cream afterwards.  
“It’s the small victories.” He’d said before licking a long strip around his slowly melting mint chocolate chip single scoop, oblivious to the fact that I was watching the way his tongue moved like it held all the world’s secrets.

It was the last time my life had felt right for awhile, all things considered. 

A few of my classmates had seen us together at the ice cream stand, had watched as Shiro paid for both of us and we’d sat talking and laughing together over our respective cones. And for them, that was enough to pin a target to my back for the rest of my middle school career. 

The last few months of school came with derogatory notes pushed into the slots of my locker and bigoted slurs coughed into hands of passers by. I remember not wanting to leave my bed for school most mornings, and more times pressing the heels of my hands into tearful eyes as I perched inside a dirty bathroom stall in the boy’s room than I could count.

It was confusing and wildly unfair, being outed to my whole school before I even knew myself what I was. I saw stories all the time on Facebook pages of kids overcoming adversity and people accepting them for who they were, and I wondered why I couldn’t have had that. But at the same time, I despised it. 

Shiro had heard the rumors about me, though he didn’t know they’d directly correlated to him. And like a dutiful big brother he’d come to my aid, telling me if anyone was bothering me he’d have the whole football team beat them up for me. He’d even told me once that it was okay if I did like boys, that he knew one of the guys on the football team was gay too and that he was pretty cool, he thought. 

When I officially became a high school student, Shiro even went as far as to invite me to a party he was attending with most of the football team, promising me the team’s token gay player would be there as well, and that he’d hook us up if I wanted. 

I didn’t want. Not that. But I couldn’t turn down an invitation from him so easily.

The party was at someone’s parents house, and while it wasn’t like the off the wall high school parties I’d seen in some of my favorite 80’s classics, it was still intimidating. I felt incredibly small and uncomfortable in my black Walmart hoodie and blue jeans ripped at the knees from age, but Shiro, true to his words beforehand that he wouldn’t leave me alone, kept by my side. He introduced me to his teammate, whose attention I held for approximately five minutes until he left me in search of beer, but in that time span Shiro had also seemingly disappeared. It hurt a little, thinking that he’d been looking for an opportunity to dump me onto someone else before he made his rounds, but I didn’t think too much of it as I searched the tub filled with ice for something that wouldn’t burn my throat or taste like piss on the way down.

I’d heard his muffled laughter a few minutes after I’d downed a hard cider, coming through the screen in the sliding door leading to the backyard, and like the nosey teenager with a crush I was, I’d decided to see where it was coming from. 

It was Shiro, laying down in a hammock on top of someone. A girl, I could immediately tell, from the blonde hair cascading slightly over the side of it. They were laughing as the hammock swung back and forth, obviously slightly tipsy and from the looks of it, handsy, as the blonde slid her hands up Shiro’s clothed chest. I felt something in me constrict when he stopped laughing long enough to lean down for a kiss. It was the sinking feeling in my stomach and the thoughts hammering through my brain screaming that I didn’t know if I wanted to hate her or be her that made me turn, made me go into the living room of the house and pick a fight with the quarterback of the football team with the excuse that he’d been looking at me funny, had me lying on the floor with my nose pulsing blood and the feelings beat out of me.

They also had Shiro rushing in, looking flustered with the blonde trailing behind him, kneeling beside me and asking me what the fuck I was thinking.

I wanted to punch him too.

And when he’d tried to walk me back to my house, supporting me with only one of those muscular arms, I’d tried to. I’d missed, mostly, only grazing that strong jaw, but it had the effect I’d wanted it too.

“What the fuck, Keith?!” He’d spat, dropping his hold on me and watching me stumble backwards before I caught myself. “What the fuck is up with you tonight?!”

“What the fuck is ever up with me.” I’d stated blandly, wiping dry blood from my nose on my hoodie sleeve. 

“Can you just like, talk to me? Please? For once?” Shiro asked, and instead of a plead it sounded more like he was asking about a chore, fed up that he’d had to take care of his stitled little brother instead of getting laid. 

“Fuck you.” I’d said, standing there in the middle of the street a block away from both our houses. “Fuck you and fuck the way you think of me. Fuck the way everyone thinks of me.” I limped closer to him then, out of necessity to jab my finger into his chest accusingly. “I’m not anyone’s burden, and I’m not your fucking project.”

“You’re not my project, and you’re not a burden, Keith.” He’d said, catching my wrist in his hand and holding it steady. “I just want to help you. Tell me how I can help you.” 

I’ve never been good emotions, especially at explaining them, and in that moment I wasn't sure what I wanted, or what would help. The small amount of alcohol I’d had had frayed my nerves like the threadbare jeans I was wearing. It had also made more bold, and I was high on the adrenaline from getting my ass kicked and yelling at the one person I’d been able to call a friend. 

Kissing Shiro that night had never been the plan, and to this day I have no idea what I’d been thinking, though the correct answer was probably nothing. I’d had to stand on my toes to reach his height, using the grip he hand on my wrist as leverage. He’d been surprised, not responsive at first, but after a moment I’d felt an arm tighten around my waist and that warm mouth I’d dreamed about melding into mine. 

It was over as soon as it happened, and the awkward shuffling that’d followed had taken my feelings of joy and shattered them. 

“Let's get you home.” Was all he said as he’d started back off down the sidewalk towards both our houses, and I’d had no choice but to follow. I’d never had a choice where Shiro was concerned. 

That night I’d laid awake, staring at the plastic glow in the dark stars on my ceiling which were long past their prime, their eerie green glow pale in the darkness of my room. 

Nothing and everything ran through my head, pounding against my skull and making me unable to close my eyes for even a moment of rest. I’d been tired, so tired, but the events of the night had set my body on fire, leaving it burning into ash in their wake. 

There’d been a light tapping on my window, one which had scared me into grabbing the pocket knife off my bed side table, but the figure that greeted me had me even more surprised than if it had been a serial killer. 

Shiro pushed the window open after I’d unlocked it, dragging himself through it and landing on my bed with a light bounce. He looked nervous, moving to sit next to me on the bed and then lying down in a way we hadn't done since we were kids. 

“What are you doing?” I’d asked, wincing when my voice cracked, though I had no trouble following suit to lay next to him, the both of us staring up at my dusty night sky. 

“You told me how I can help you.” Shiro said simply, reaching over to gently take my hand in his. “So here I am.”

“Here you are.” I’d said, and for the first time in what felt like years, I slept with the peace in knowing I’d been found.


End file.
